Long Live the Bookshop: A Texas Literary Road Trip

We went on a road trip from Waco to Archer City, Texas, because I am a fan of Pulitzer Prize-winning and Oscar Award-winning writer Larry McMurtry. Bookstores became a main event of the trip. As a McMurtry fan, there was no other way for it to be.

After all, when Larry McMurtry accepted the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Brokeback Mountain, he thanked booksellers. All of them, “from the humblest paperback exchange to the masters of the great bookshops of the world,” he said. “All are contributors to the survival of the culture of the book, a wonderful culture which we mustn’t lose.”

In his life, McMurtry was a voracious reader, prolific writer, and avid book collector. 

Late September, Chris and I drove from Waco to Archer City, Texas, McMurtry’s hometown. The weather was hot, but not the oppressive July kind. Manageable. 

Three bookstores made the drive worth the miles.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase a book through one of my links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend books I’ve personally read or bought with my own money, which, as this post makes clear, is a lot of them.

Waco: Where the Trip Begins

We started in Waco for two reasons, both McMurtry-adjacent.

The first: a portion of his personal book collection, along with his typewriter and a few mementos, resides in the library of Hotel 1928, renovated by Chip and Joanna Gaines. Stay there, and you can spend time in that room, surrounded by rich dark walls and bookcases holding a fraction of what McMurtry accumulated over a lifetime of reading. 

The second reason: the Dr Pepper Museum. McMurtry, a devoted Dr Pepper drinker, once wrote that had he been in a museum mood in Waco, he could have inspected two dandies: the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame or “the even dandier Dr Pepper Museum.” He was right. It is indeed dandy. 

All I needed was a bookstore to make our stay in Waco complete.

Fabled Bookshop & Cafe: Waco, Texas

Fabled Bookshop is just a ten-minute walk from Hotel 1928. A banner on the wall: Long Live the Bookshop. A mug for sale on the table: the words Read ‘Em and Weep partially frame a cowboy on a horse, arm outstretched, holding a book. I wanted it badly, but I had many miles to go and a flight home.

Shelf talkers are beneath books throughout the store, some marked “Fabled Favorite” and others “Staff Pick.” Evidently, the staff here doesn’t just sell books. They read them. A lot.

Their Classics section’s variety feels vital and alive, not academic and stale. On its shelves when we visited: Beloved, The Things They Carried, The Odyssey, Travels with Charley, and The Princess Bride. Among others, of course. 

Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe is a Fabled Favorite. It’s one of mine too. 

I found the Texas section situated next to Gardening, not far from the front. Texas Cocktails stood next to In a Narrow Grave, which stood next to face-out copies of Lonesome Dove. I bought In a Narrow Grave. I had to get a McMurtry book, and Lonesome Dove was too thick to buy, knowing there were two more bookstores to visit on this road trip.

I also photographed Booked: A Traveler’s Guide to Literary Locations Around the World by Richard Kreitner and made a note to buy it later. I have a rule: if I photograph a book instead of buying it in the moment, usually because of luggage weight, I buy it from that store’s website or through bookshop.org afterward. The store should get credit for the find.

Barber’s Book Store: Fort Worth, Texas

Est. 1925. The oldest bookstore in Texas.

Barber’s was the first bookstore that Larry McMurtry ever bought a book from. It was also where he purchased 70,000 used books when a previous owner, Mr. Perkins, closed his larger store, a fact I learned from a Fort Worth Star-Telegram piece by author-historian Richard Selcer.

There’s a sign asking that backpacks be left at the counter. When I offered mine, the man working waved me off. He didn’t have room back there for my backpack, and he wasn’t as rules-oriented as his brother. 

In a jumble of haphazardly organized books on Texas, I came across a slim volume called Spurs of Inspiration. I picked it up only because it said Archer County, Texas, July 2005 on the cover. It looked like a college literary magazine. I had no particular reason to buy it, except that we were headed to Archer City, and Archer County made it feel relevant.

I didn’t know yet that there was a photo inside of a man I’d meet later that same day.

I also bought Anything for Billy by McMurtry. My purchases were handwritten on old-school receipt paper. BSR Spurs, PZX McMurtry. Total: $9.97. Stamped at the bottom: Barber’s Bookstore, 901 Throckmorton St., Fort Worth, TX 76102.

Spurs of Inspiration, Archer County, 2005, published by the University of North Texas. A few pages in, just before the Prologue, was a photo of George Getschow. 

Without George Getschow, it’s unlikely that the Archer City Writers’ Workshop or the Larry McMurtry Literary Center would exist. I didn’t know his name or of his association with the workshop or the LMLC. On the same evening I picked up that slim volume, I met him at The Old Spur Hotel in Archer City, where he told Chris and me about Hay-on-Wye in Wales, the place that inspired McMurtry to turn Archer City into a literary destination. 

I didn’t connect the dots until after we’d returned home, but moments like this one convince me that independent and used bookstores are my guides, my fortune tellers. How else do I explain standing and pulling out exactly the right book? 

July 2005. McMurtry still had nearly sixteen years of life left. All the bends in the road we cannot see. I was meant to have that book.

Archer City: The Book Ranch

The drive from Fort Worth to Archer City takes about two hours. 

Archer City is small. McMurtry’s vision for it was big: a book ranch, a literary destination, a Hay-on-Wye of West Texas. Hay-on-Wye, the Welsh town that transformed itself into a second-hand book mecca, gave McMurtry a model for what Archer City could be

For a time, that vision nearly came true. McMurtry filled four downtown storefronts with his book collection. Then he auctioned off roughly 200,000 volumes in 2012. What remained became what it is today: the Larry McMurtry Literary Center & Bookstore, housed in a former car dealership McMurtry purchased and converted, the original Booked Up sign still over the door, a new one beneath it explaining what it has become.

Larry McMurtry Literary Center: Archer City, Texas

McMurtry called it his temple of books. It smells like an old theater’s backstage mixed with well-worn book pages. More than 300,000 books live here. Not all are for sale. Some will remain as long as the center stands, allowing visitors to commune with them. During my two visits, I felt a kinship with everyone else in the store. You know the type. Your type, probably, if you’re reading this.

A wooden post near the entrance is carved with Lonesome Dove quotes, character names, and locations. “If you left me a choice, I didn’t notice it.” An autographed photograph of Robert Duvall as Gus McCrae hangs nearby, next to a shot of him and Tommy Lee Jones.

Let your eyes wander and you’ll find a vintage plank signed by Carl Sandburg and Tom Wolfe, a photograph from the New Orleans Red Light District circa 1912, and seats believed to have been pulled from Archer City’s Royal Theater — one of the main settings from The Last Picture Show. There’s a room of rare and unusual books you can ask to see.

I bought the 40th-anniversary edition of Lonesome Dove that afternoon. I had to. When I revisited the store, I bought Books: A Memoir. Same reason. 

Practical Details:

Our Larry McMurtry Literary Center: A Booklover’s Pilgrimage, Welcome to Archer City: A Literary Texas Getaway, and Spur Hotel, Archer City: A Texas Stay for Booklovers posts have all you need to know to make your own trip to Archer City and McMurtry’s temple of books. lmcmurtrylitcenter.org

If you plan to spend time in Waco, these posts can help you plan your stay: Hotel 1928 Review: Fixer Upper Meets McMurtry in Waco, Texas and Dr Pepper Museum Full Review. Fabled Bookshop & Cafe, located in downtown Waco, is about a 10-min walk from Hotel 1928. fabledbookshop.com

You can find Barber’s Bookstore at 901 Throckmorton St., Fort Worth, TX 76102. barbersbookstore.com 

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